Today’s spot from the breakfast table is Treasure Island, and more specifically the huge hangar on the southeast corner of the island.
As it sat gleaming in the sun this morning, I couldn’t help wondering what it is used for these days. Evidently it (and the entire island) was built for the 1939 World’s Fair, and also intended as the major airport for San Francisco. The Navy possessed a far-off airport called Mills Field, and for some reason offered a swap to the city in return for TI. Because of this, SFO is now 13 miles from San Francisco and a perfectly good airport site (w/ hangars!) sits half-abandoned, polluted, and relatively unused only 3 miles from the city. Evidently in its heyday during WWII, the island “processed” 12,000 sailors per day for the Pacific theatre. Unfortunately, processing sailors wasn’t the only activity pursued on the island, and the federal government is still working to decontaminate the groundwater and air of leftover plutonium and radium. Once that is done, however, a developer is waiting in line to build this:
which actually looks like a very enticing place to live. If you trust that the cleanup was effective and complete.